


Orestes

by linaerys



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-15
Updated: 2008-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-21 06:55:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/222192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linaerys/pseuds/linaerys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After S2, Peter and Nathan take care of business.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The ever caring and lovely [](http://snopes-faith.livejournal.com/profile)[**snopes_faith**](http://snopes-faith.livejournal.com/) bought me for Sweet Charity, and gave me a detailed and fascinating prompt. That plus some Greek tragedy and watching Patrick Stewart play Macbeth led to the story below. [](http://fabrisse.livejournal.com/profile)[**fabrisse**](http://fabrisse.livejournal.com/) generously betaed. [](http://technosage.livejournal.com/profile)[**technosage**](http://technosage.livejournal.com/) and [](http://scribblinlenore.livejournal.com/profile)[**scribblinlenore**](http://scribblinlenore.livejournal.com/) both provided hand-holding and enouragement.

"Live for me, Nathan," Peter whispered. If Matt couldn’t hear Peter with his ears, he could surely hear Peter with his mind. Peter wasn’t trying to block that right now. Matt could project thoughts, which means Peter could too, which means he could make Nathan hear him, even if Nathan was too far gone into unconsciousness (into death) to hear him. A smile crossed Peter’s his mind, but not his lips: he could make Nathan listen to him for once.

He brushed Nathan's hair off his forehead. It was soft and unstyled now, even his face was softer, older, marked by lines drawn in Peter’s absence. He’d changed and Peter wanted to know how.

Later. Now he needed Nathan to live. Nathan’s eyes were closed, thank goodness. Peter didn’t want to see if his eyes had gone cloudy cold, dead. Instead Peter focused on the slack muscles around Nathan's mouth and willed him to live, _live_.

And then he did. Peter could feel the difference when the life came back; before Nathan took his first new breath, or his heart beat again, _life_ entered his muscles and his mind. Peter was already smiling hopefully when Nathan’s eyes flew open and he gasped for air.

“Peter, I was . . .” He touched his chest and put his fingers through the bullet hole in he shirt. Then his eyes softened and he reached up to cup Peter’s face. “Peter, yes, you’re alive, just like I said.”

Peter’s limbs went slack with relief—last time Nathan died he couldn’t stay to see him wake, to see Nathan smile for him. Last time Adam . . . Peter pushed that thought away. Now was time for Nathan, alive and his.

Matt cleared his throat. Peter could feel the thread of his discomfort. “Come on, we have to get away from here.” Peter became aware again of where they were, a locked storage room in the basement, with a dusty floor and weeping walls.

“Where should we go?” Peter asked. “Where’s safe now?”

“We split up,” said Nathan. He made a faintly apologetic face at Parkman. “I’m too tired to . . .”

Matt nodded, gave Peter a questioning glance and shrugged. “I’ll find my own way home.”

“I can—” Peter started to say. Nathan’s hand tightened on his arm, _don’t leave me._ “I can teleport you back to New York.”

“Come back quickly,” said Nathan, his eyes never leaving Peter’s face. Once he would have stayed silent rather than admitting the weakness of needing Peter near him. Peter didn’t want to leave, even for a moment.

“You won’t even know I’m gone,” he said quietly. He risked a kiss on Nathan’s forehead, even with Matt watching. It doesn’t didn’t matter. If Matt knew, he knew. Nathan would know how to deal with that. Nathan’s hand tightened around Peter’s arm—he was scared, Peter realized.

“I promise,” Peter added. He looked at Nathan until he thought Nathan believed him.

“Where to?” he asked Matt. Matt told him the address of an apartment in New York. He put his hand on Matt’s shoulder, flipped a switch in his mind, and brought Matt home.

Feelings of chaos greeted him when they arrived. Molly was curled up on the couch, wrapped around a teddy-bear, eyes swollen with crying. Mohinder’s back was turned away from Peter as he cleaned the apartment with graceless, frustrated motions, trying to atone for something with the strength of his scrubbing.

Another presence teased at Peter’s mind. It felt dark and dangerous, a surging violence barely kept in check. Peter didn’t know why he could feel all this. He never used to feel every passing emotion, even once he gained Matt’s power. Adam had some mental discipline that kept Peter blocked and isolated for so long; now the inrushing of emotions and thoughts around him was difficult to shut off.

“Is everything alright?” Peter asked. Mohinder’s eyes flashed accusation before turning the accusation back upon himself. _Failed, failed, failed,_ echoed in Mohinder’s mind, a _mea culpa_ with no hope of forgiveness.

“We had some excitement,” he was all he said, though, words measured and wary.

Matt glanced at Mohinder, expression and mind both unreadable. This was not Peter’s business. Nathan was what mattered. He felt suddenly tired, bone-weary, desiring nothing but Nathan’s presence. _Call me if you need help,_ he thought at Matt, neither knowing nor caring whether Matt’s call could bridge the distances that would be between them.

And then he blinked back to Nathan’s side. “I did notice you were gone,” said Nathan dryly, but his lips moved in the same smile that curved Peter’s.

“We should lay low for a little while,” said Peter as he helped Nathan to his feet. He didn’t know if that was actually what they should do—soon Nathan would take charge again, so it didn’t matter. For now he only wanted to give Nathan an excuse to rest.

Peter blinked them to a hotel in New York, and checked them in, leaving a cash deposit with the front desk. Adam had imparted many bits of wisdom about staying underground during their cross-country trip, one of which was the inadvisability of using credit cards.

It wasn’t the nicest hotel in New York, but it had soft, freshly laundered sheets, a big bed, and fluffy bathrobes. Nathan stripped down to shower, wrinkling his brow at his ruined clothes, and shoving them in a trash can.

“Burn them,” he said. “Bloodstained clothes in the trash will raise questions.” He grimaced and turned away. Peter heated his hands to destroy the clothes and Nathan’s back stiffened. Peter could feel the traces of fear and disgust coming from him. He recoiled slightly when Peter touched his shoulder with cool hands after the burning was done.

“Hey, it’s okay, I can control it now.”

Nathan visibly relaxed. “I know. I just . . .” He shook his head and turned away toward the bathroom. Peter watched him go. No aspect of Nathan had not changed in Peter absence. His body was gone to whipcord and muscle, stripped down to the essentials. Peter suffered a moment of almost maternal feeling—well, not their mother, someone else’s—an urge to take him away to somewhere warm and let him rest and fatten up in the sun.

Maybe he could. Adam was gone now, and everyone thought Nathan was dead. Now was a perfect time to disappear for a while.

Peter was about to make sure Nathan hadn’t fallen asleep in the shower when the water shut off, and he came out wrapped in a robe, toweling his hair dry.

Peter rolled over on the bed and patted the space next to him for Nathan to join him, but Nathan paced back and forth, rubbing his hair, seeming more lost in thought than trying to get it dry. “Who shot me, Peter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would Adam have arranged—no, Hiro dealt with him. Who would want me dead? She could. . . . no.”

“Nathan.” Peter stood up and walked over to him. He took the towel gently out of Nathan’s hands, dropped it on the floor, and held Nathan’s wrists until his arms relaxed. “We’ll find out. There’s—” he placed his hand on Nathan’s cheek and forced Nathan’s eyes to meet his “—there’s nothing we can’t do together. That’s what I did wrong—leaving you to go with Adam. That’s how it all went wrong.”

Nathan looked like he wanted to believe, but then something in him snapped shut again. “Why did you leave?”

Now it was Peter’s turn to look away. “I trusted him. He hated the Company and he had a plan.” A plan, a terrifying charisma and a belief in Peter that Nathan had never had. He wouldn’t say that. That belief was a lie. Nathan was the one who was right about him all along. “I missed you Nathan. Even when they took my memory, I felt like a part of me was missing until I saw you again.”

He drew his hand down Nathan’s neck and felt the vein beating with life against his hand. Four months since they’d touched, months that looked like they’d eaten years from Nathan’s life, made him weak where he was once strong.

And Adam in between. Adam never had any qualms about making Peter his, body, mind and heart. Adam’s voice kept him company during the long nights of imprisonment. Adam’s hypnotic voice that reached through the wall and made Peter his. He’d shared secrets with Adam that he’d told no one but Nathan.

When Elle left him aroused and hating himself, it was Adam who talked to him, soothed him through release and relief. Adam who filled the void left by Nathan.

Now Nathan was back, though. Nathan’s fingertips were so familiar on his skin, as if Peter had memorized each whorl of fingerprint, craved those exact ones on his body during those long months, even when Adam tried to replace them with his own, and now that they touched him again, he was complete. But Nathan’s touch was hesitant, not as though he was holding himself back, but as if he had lost the confidence that he owned Peter, that will to bend Peter under his hands for the pleasure of watching him fall.

“I’m yours, Nathan,” Peter said, drawing Nathan’s face toward his. “I’ve always been yours.” _Even when I didn’t want to be._

Nathan still kissed him gently, lips brushing his, until Peter wanted to crush them together, somehow to force Nathan to take him, to take him apart and put him back together. “Please,” he said, his throat tight. He slid his palm around to rub over the front of Nathan’s robe, to stroke some life into him, but Nathan was already hard.

“Yes,” said Nathan softly, and Peter could feel the thread of loss underneath, Nathan’s mourning for his family, his loss of purpose, until Peter shut off the too-intimate connection. Nathan’s hands would tell him everything he wanted to know.

“You still want me,” said Peter, half as a question.

Nathan closed his eyes as if in pain. “Yes,” he said. Whatever had broken in him at Kirby Plaza remained broken. Peter’s triumph at making Nathan admit that felt hollow.

They touched like old, sure lovers now: Nathan tracing his hand down Peter’s chest, over his shirt until Peter undid the buttons and pulled his hand inside. Peter tugged the cord of Nathan’s robe undone. Nathan kissed him again, gentle, too gentle, until Peter clung to his face and pulled him hard and close. Then Nathan ran his hands over Peter’s shorn hair and kissed his neck, murmuring, “You’re alive, you’re alive.”

Speaking those words seemed to free a near cousin to the Nathan Peter remembered. He held Peter at arm’s length for a moment, looking hard at him, until Peter smiled, abashed. “You’re alive too, Nathan,” he said.

“I am.” A hint of his old harshness. He let Peter down onto the bed, and pulled off his trousers. He opened Peter with spit and determination, frowning when Peter gasped. When he tried to draw his hand away, Peter reached down and held it there.

“I want you inside me,” he said.

Nathan nodded and obeyed. It still hurt, for all Nathan’s gentleness. When he went soft, Nathan pulled out and licked Peter hard again, over his protests, but he spread easier when Nathan pressed into him again. Peter opened his mind, tentative this time, and heard a whispered _mine_ , but he didn’t know whether it was his or Nathan’s.

 _I’ll take care of you, Nathan,_ he promised. Nathan heard, and his expression changed. _I’ll help you get back everything you lost._

Nathan opened his mouth to say something, a denial, so Peter pushed himself up on his elbows and kissed Nathan silent. Nathan cupped Peter’s ass in his hands and drew him forward, sliding him along Nathan’s cock until he was deep inside, and then he started to move again, small tugs in and out that made Peter’s throat catch with pleasure. He pulled Nathan to him and buried his face in Nathan’s neck, calling his name when he came.

Nathan stayed inside him for a few minutes, murmuring against Peter’s hair, incomprehensible things that Peter didn’t open his mind to try to understand. He didn’t need to.

Then Nathan kissed him swiftly on the forehead and went to shower again. Peter joined him, and they didn’t speak, just passed soap and shampoo back and forth in silent companionship.

“Do you want to tell me?” Nathan asked when they lay next to each other again. “How you met Adam, what he told you?”

So Peter told him, haltingly: the company, Elle, meeting Adam, healing Nathan. He left out the sex; it didn’t seem to matter. Nathan would guess or he wouldn’t, but Peter wouldn’t cause him that hurt, not now. Finally he told Nathan about the amnesia, meeting Caitlin, going to the future and finding Adam again. “I don’t even know how it works—now that the future is safe, is she safe too? Or is she stranded in that future?”

Nathan shrugged. “I don’t know, Peter. I’m still . . .” He paused, frowning “This time travel thing, it’s—maybe you could ask Hiro?” He sighed.

“What?” Peter leaned up on his elbow and smiled to see Nathan’s familiar Peter’s-about-to-do-something-stupid face.

“This girl. You sound like you did with Simone. With flying.”

About to do something stupid again, he meant. “Tell me what to do, Nathan.”

Nathan leaned up to look at him. He traced the line of Peter’s jaw with a fingertip, fondly. “That’s never worked before.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever failed so spectacularly before.”

Nathan’s fingers found the edges of Peter’s hair. “You did the right thing in the end.”

Peter looked away. “Barely.” He met Nathan’s eyes again. “Tell me, Nathan, please. I don’t know what’s right without you to tell me…”

“You have to pick up the pieces, Peter. Adam _killed_ people." Peter didn't say anything. Nathan drew a finger along Peter’s neck, just where the hair started. "I can help."

“What _are_ you going to do now, Nathan?”

His voice went cold. “Find out who tried to kill me.”

“Are you gonna make another speech?”

“I didn’t get to make even the one.”

“Maybe you should get to the point faster next time,” Peter teased.

“Maybe I’ll have writers next time.”

The wryness in his voice sounded like home. This was the Nathan he knew, the one who would have seen through Adam in once glance, the one Peter never intended to leave again. Peter leaned up on his elbow. “I can help you find out who killed—who tried to kill you.”

“How?”

“I’ll go back in time to that moment, and I’ll see.”

“You’ll see who pulled the trigger. Someone else loaded that gun and put it in his hand. When are you going?” Nathan asked, eyes suddenly worried again.

Peter shifted closer to Nathan so their bodies could touch under the sheets. He curled himself into Nathan’s arms as best he could, even though Nathan seemed so much smaller to him now. “I think the morning is soon enough. Don’t you?”

Nathan kissed his forehead. “Yes,” he said.

***

They slept past noon though, and woke to a maid pounding on the door. Peter sent her away with a thought and called the front desk to extend their stay. He could always get more cash now.

“How _are_ you paying for this, Peter?” Nathan asked. Peter wondered if he was still projecting, but no, Nathan could always read him too well, even when they had both been more ordinary.

“Cash. Credit cards didn’t seem safe.”

“Where are you getting it?”

“Here and there. Not from anyone who needs it.”

Nathan raised his eyebrows, but said only, “While you’re feeling larcenous, I could use some clothes.”

Peter blinked to Nathan’s closet in the Gramercy mansion and tugged random shirts off of hangers. If he took enough, Nathan would surely find some combination that matched. He felt his way to the trouser side of the closet, past summer-weight wool to something thick and soft that felt like jeans. He ran his hand down to the cuff and felt the dimpled hem—yes, jeans, and of course Nathan would have them hanging in the closet as well, not tucked in a drawer like a normal human.

He was about to take them and go when he heard his mother’s voice, crisp tones cutting through door and fabric even though the words did not. She wasn’t in the room beyond, but the one across the hall. Peter set his bounty down gently on the floor of the closet, made himself invisible and teleported into the hall.

“Thank you,” she was saying dismissively into a phone. Her back stiffened. “Your sympathy is appreciated.” He thought he heard a catch in her throat. “The funeral will be this Sunday.” Then, with a thread of desperation, “This hasn’t been easy for me. Keep your end of the bargain or—very well. See that she remains so.”

Belatedly, Peter reached out to try to read her mind, but he was stopped by a barrier as smooth and strong as any Adam ever raised against him.

She turned and faced where he stood, eyes focused on the office across the hall. “Peter . . . ?” she asked. She reached up and Peter started to reach back, but before their hands met, her face hardened and she dropped her hand. “Peter is dead,” she said aloud, voice stern. “They have shape shifters.” Scolding herself, Peter thought. She turned away from him and picked up the phone.

 _I let him die, just like Nathan_ , he heard, so clearly her voice that he thought she had spoken again, but her lips remained firmly pressed together.

Peter jumped back into the closet, gathered the clothes, and returned to Nathan’s side. He dropped the clothes on the bed. Nathan sat up and picked up one shirt after another, frowning at them.

“I haven’t worn these since . . .”

Peter looked at him sharply. “Since what?”

“Since before the explosion.” Flat, dispassionate, as if it had happened to someone else. Peter wanted to cling to him, to beg for forgiveness, and Nathan would give it, of course, but it wouldn’t change the way his voice went dead whenever he had to mention his burns.

“What happened after I healed you?” Peter asked. Nathan glanced at him sharply. “Come on, you don’t have to say it, just think it.”

“Don’t, Peter.”

“What?”

“You, Ma, the Company—I won’t be ruled.”

“I just meant it would be easier.”

 _Phantom pain—cracked skin—burning, burning, burning—Heidi’s eyes accusing—the living death of waiting—waiting for Peter—waiting for a sign—waiting to live or die._

“Nothing about any of this is easy, and invading my privacy isn’t going to help,” said Nathan, tone deceptively mild. He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Time is supposed to heal, right?”

“Right,” said Peter.

***

Peter went back in time to look. There was no point in waiting, no better way to find out, nothing that Nathan wanted more, except perhaps the last year undone, and even with Peter’s ability to travel through time, he didn’t think he could make that happen.

The press conference. His other self stood stern and impassive next to Nathan, who looked fragile, broken, emotions all on the surface. But that wasn’t where he needed to look. Somewhere beyond the crowd waited Nathan’s killer.

Peter froze time when he heard the shots. For a moment he wanted to pluck the bullets out of the air and place them harmlessly on the ground, but no, he wasn’t here for that. Nathan was safe in the present, “Safer when people think I’m dead, Peter. Don’t change that,” he’d said.

So he walked around where they hung in midair, waiting to tear Nathan’s flesh. The killer stood in the shadows, wearing dark clothing and a hat. He had already started to tuck his gun back into its holster when Peter stopped time. He had to walk right up to the man to see who it was, staying carefully invisible in case he lost control of the time freeze. Nathan had talked him through that as well.

He didn’t want to see the cleft chin, the mole on the side of the man’s cheek. _Noah_. Peter backed away quickly, careless of what might be behind him. He resumed the flow of time and vanished before he could see Nathan fall again.

“It was Noah Bennet,” he told Nathan as soon as he returned. “Claire’s father.”

Nathan gave him a look. “Claire’s adoptive father,” Peter amended. “Why would he—do you think this is a personal thing?”

“I really don’t know, Peter.” He rolled up his sleeves with crisp, precise movements that had been missing from his body language until now. Peter hid a smile at that. Part of Nathan _liked_ having an enemy. “Why don’t we ask him?”

It was weirdly satisfying, pinning Bennet up against the wall. Peter let Elle’s lightning flicker over his fingers. Bennet didn’t look frightened yet, but Peter had confidence he could change that.

“You tried to kill me, Mr. Bennet,” said Nathan.

“Sloppy of you to let me know you’re alive then,” said Bennet, just as coolly, although the wheeze in his voice from Peter choking off his air diminished the effect somewhat.

“You didn’t try very hard. You knew Peter’s blood could save me.” Nathan paced as he spoke, as though the ideas were just occurring to him. “You didn’t want to do this. Tell me who did.”

“Or what, Peter’s going to torture me? He doesn’t have it in him.”

Nathan shrugged. “Maybe not. But I do.” He left the implication hanging there. Peter set his shoulders more firmly. Yes, this was how it was supposed to be. He’d always known Nathan was supposed to be the hand that guided him. Years of rebellion hadn’t changed that fact.

“And anyway,” Nathan continued, “I don’t need to. Peter can take it from your mind.”

“That takes practice.” Bennet sneered. “I doubt Peter has the control.”

“What happens if he loses control, I wonder.” Nathan stroked his chin theatrically. “Would your mind survive?”

“Fine. You’re right, it wasn’t my idea. Try to stay dead long enough for me to get Claire away from them.” He threw a warning glance at Peter. _Don’t try to save her this time. She’s not yours to save._

“It was the Company,” Bennet continued. “Specifically, Robert Bishop. Bob to his friends and enemies. They profit from their secrets, Mr. Petrelli. You would have destroyed that.”

“He’s the one who imprisoned me, Nathan,” Peter said. “He . . .” Peter trailed off as Bennet’s thought invaded his head, projected, like someone who knew how to read minds had taught him how. _Your mother knew too. Bishop would never have done it without her consent._ His thoughts were even more smug than his voice, so cloying and unpleasant that the inside of Peter’s mind felt dirty for having him there.

 _Why are you telling me this?_

 _I don’t appreciate being bullied._ “You can let me down now.”

“Thanks for your permission.” Peter glanced at Nathan and tried to read his mood without reading his thoughts. Were they done here, or did Nathan need to know more?

Nathan jerked his head to the side and they walked out through the dusty hall. Peter’s skin crawled with the memories of too many other wide, dingy halls in Odessa, Texas. He never wanted to see another one, or smell the impersonal scent of damp concrete again.

“You really can let him down now,” said Nathan when they walked through a set of double doors.

Peter glanced back. There Bennet remained, pinned on the wall like an exhibit in a museum. “Oh. I guess so.” He flexed his mind and Bennet dropped with a soft thud. “Aren’t you’re worried he’ll tell The Company that you’re alive.”

Nathan’s mouth was set in a hard line. “They’ll find out sooner or later. This place is probably bugged.”

“Are we going to see Bob next?”

“No, we’re going to see Ma.”

Peter froze. “Why?”

“She’s up to her eyeballs in The Company, in this Adam business. She . . . there’s something else I need to tell you.”

“More secrets, Nathan?”

Nathan put an arm around his shoulder, pulled him close and kissed his temple, like he did when Peter was a child: impulsive, quick, and brotherly. “No more secrets, Peter.” But Peter could hear the uncomfortable thought that followed, _None except this, except you and me._

“No more secrets,” Peter echoed. And then they stood outside in the Primatech parking lot, under the hot, parched Texas sky. “How do you want to get there?” asked Peter, looking up.

“We could fly,” said Nathan softly.

Peter’s heart swelled. Here was Nathan as Peter always wanted him, dumping a lifetime worth of gifts, of affection and openness, on him in a few days.

Nathan floated up into the air, and Peter behind him. The ascent seemed slow, but when Peter looked down, the fields around Odessa spread out beneath like a patchwork quilt. He dipped for a moment, surprise robbing him of control, and Nathan swooped down to catch him.

“This is nice,” said Peter. He glanced up at Nathan, whose face wore an expression Peter couldn’t read. “What did you have to tell me?”

Nathan moved around Peter so he held him from behind. His chest warmed Peter’s back as his front grew cold in the rushing air. “It’s Ma,” he said quietly. With the wind rushing in his ears, Peter felt Nathan’s voice more than he could hear it. “She—she wanted you to explode.”

Peter tensed, and Nathan held him tighter. “She didn’t want me to do anything to stop it,” Nathan amended. “She thought . . . she thought it would bring the world together.”

“What did you say?”

“She told me I would lead this new world.”

Peter could imagine it all too well: Nathan had inherited their mother’s pragmatism, in him she cultivated it, refined it. He would have been tempted. As tempted as Peter was to give up all control to Adam, even with Nathan standing there, begging him not to. “You did the right thing in the end,” said Peter. “That’s what matters.”

He thought he felt Nathan smile against his neck as they picked up speed. Soon the wind was screaming by them so fast, the only way they could have spoken would be mind to mind.

It took the same three and half hours to return to New York that it would have taken in a plane. Peter made them invisible so they could land on the street next to their hotel without attracting notice. He stumbled when Nathan let go of him, knocking into a tourist whose eyes went terrified as she clutched her purse.

“Mom now?” asked Peter when they got back to their room. “Bennet said . . . he said you’re right, there’s no way . . .” Peter’s voice started breaking so he lowered it. “She must have known you’d survive.”

“What did Bennet say?”

“He said The Company would never have ordered your death without her permission.” Peter looked around the room wildly. He hadn’t had to think about it until he said it out loud, but now, saying it to Nathan, watching him nod his head as if it made _sense_ that a mother could plan the deaths of both her children—that made it real. Peter put his hand up to his mouth to stifle a cry.

Nathan rushed to his side. “Peter, Peter, shh,” he said. He kissed Peter’s forehead absently and held him, until Peter’s muscles unclenched and he could breathe again. “She thinks she’s saving the world,” he said.

“Does that make it better?” Peter asked. _Tell me it does, Nathan, tell me to forgive her._ Peter didn’t try to quiet his thoughts.

“I think it makes it worse.” Nathan’s voice was cold. “I’m going to talk to her. You stay here.”

“But what—?”

“She’s not going to try to kill me herself, Peter. She doesn’t get her hands dirty.”

Nathan spent the next few hours going over documents on his laptop. He’d collected some files on The Company in addition to what he already knew about Linderman’s holdings but even with the access Nathan had to his father’s files, their knowledge of The Company, its aims and its members was paltry.

“There’s nothing here,” said Nathan eventually. “I have to ask her.”

“Please let me come with you.”

“I’ll be alright.”

“I could help.”

“She’s more likely to tell the truth if it’s just me,” said Nathan. “She wants you to think well too well of her.”

Peter watched from their window as Nathan left the hotel. He turned up the collar of his jacket, although the day was warm.

Peter waited a half hour, time enough for Nathan to get a cab downtown to the Gramercy Park house, and then teleported himself there. He arrived in time to see Nathan let himself in and find their mother in the formal parlor, where she sat on one of the claw-footed couches, sipping a cup of tea well-laced with brandy.

“Peter,” said Mrs. Petrelli when Nathan walked in. She did not turn her head to look.

“It’s Nathan, Ma.” He came around the couch and kissed the cheek she presented to him.

“I know that. I’m not addled,” she said, setting the tea down on the coffee table.

Nathan muttered something about not being sure of that as he took the seat across from her, but not loud enough that she had to respond.

“How have you been, Nathan?” she asked, folding her hands in her lap.

“Dead. How do you think?”

“No need to be so . . . crude. I knew Peter wouldn’t let you die.”

“No, Adam taught him well on that count.”

“Since you’re here, I assume you’ve given over that ridiculous scheme.”

“Telling people the truth?”

“You’d start a panic, Nathan.”

“Letting New York explode would have started a panic too, Ma.” He stood up and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Don’t you think it’s time to stop lying to me?”

Mrs. Petrelli sniffed, and Nathan turned away from her, stalking angrily over to the window. “Are _you_ going to stop lying to _me_?” she asked. “Lies of omission are just as bad as lies spoken.”

“What are you talking about?” He sounded weary, but Peter could see his neck tense, and their mother, always keen for the scent of blood, noticed it also. She paused as she leaned over to pick up her teacup, and her lips moved slightly, a quick, self-satisfied curve.

“Peter is here,” she said. Peter flattened himself against the wall and tried not to breathe.

“I told him not to.” Nathan did not sound particularly surprised.

“Does he always do everything you say? I had the impression he rebelled sometimes.”

“I told him you weren’t a threat to me, so he didn’t need to be here. Are you?”

“Not as much as you are to him.”

Now Nathan’s body seemed to thrum with tension, though he moved hardly a muscle. When he spoke it came out in a rasp. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you do, Nathan,” she said, voice false and cloying. “Peter is yours. He rebels and you punish him. That’s how it started, isn’t it?”

“This is not what I’m here for,” Nathan continued thickly. “I want you to call off The Company.”

She stood up and walked around toward Nathan, trailing her hand over the top of the couch, in an oddly coquettish gesture. “What makes you think I have that power?”

Nathan fixed his eyes firmly on her. “I know you do. Every one of your secrets has cost lives. This Company, this . . . _conspiracy_ needs to end now.”

Her smile was so thin and chilly that Peter shivered. That half-dreamed conversation on Charles Duveaux’s roof had exposed Peter to this side of her, but he still hoped more and more as time dulled those memories, that it was just a vision borne of his new powers. Not real. Not this.

“Nathan, you are not the first man to try to tell me what to do. All but of a few have failed entirely, and even those that did not—” she brushed off her fingers “—well, they are gone, and I remain.”

Nathan stood still as if she’d frozen him solid. Her footsteps brought her close to him. She put her hand on his shoulder. “You are not as strong as you pretend, Nathan. You are a brittle, fragile shell. I’ve killed for my secrets. I’ve ordered men to their deaths and they’ve gone willingly.” Her eyes flicked up to meet his, an admission, Peter thought, even though her mind still presented a flawless surface to Peter, unbreakable.

She slid her hand up to grip Nathan’s neck, too hard to be a caress. “I would have let Adam kill me rather than let our secret out.” Her voice turned sad. “It’s your secret too, if only you will take it, use it.”

“It’s wrong,” said Nathan. He pulled her hand from his neck as if picking off a bug. “Once people know about us, the Company will lose its hold.”

Mrs. Petrelli made a sour face. “It’s been tried before.”

“I’ll succeed this time. If I don’t, Peter will. And if he doesn’t, Claire will.” Nathan’s voice rose in intensity as he spoke.

“Don’t make me—”

“What? Send a hired gun after me? You tried that already, Ma.” His voice came down heavy with sarcasm on that last word.

“You can be exposed too, Nathan. How do you think your credibility will hold up after the world finds out how you drove your wife away with your insanity, how you cheated the election, how you raped your brother—”

“It’s not like that!” Peter shouted, losing his invisibility as her words jarred him out of his paralysis. He flung her across the room before he knew what he was doing and watched her fall to the ground, fear written plainly on her face.

“Peter,” she said, reaching out toward him. “I should have protected you from him.”

“You should have protected both of us.” He was crying now, but it didn’t matter except that the tears were clouding his eyes and he needed to _see_ her, for once in his life, see who she really was. “That’s what mothers do. But you were the one we needed protection from.”

She opened her mouth and tried to speak, but Peter choked the words off in her throat. No air, no breath, no hateful, lying words to flay him further.

He walked toward her, pinning her where she lay slumped against the wall of the parlor. “You’re going to leave Nathan and me alone now,” he said. “You’re going to let us live. You’re going to tell us anything we want to know about The Company.” He reached out with his mind to take those secrets from her, and crashed against her resistance, like running his shoulder into a stone wall.

 _Or the wall of a safe._ He envisioned her mind like the vault that held Adam’s virus, difficult to break, but not impossible. Solid steel rippled. The door was ready to fly off its hinges. Peter felt Nathan’s hand on his shoulder. Dimly, beyond the noise of breaking metal that filled his head, Peter could hear Nathan’s low voice, saying his name, begging and pleading.

He listened to it, and came back to himself, to this room of yellow and peach and gold, so sane and safe. “Peter stop. Stop. Please stop.” Nathan kept repeating the words, over and over, until Peter finally registered what his eyes had refused to see.

Very little had changed, but nothing was the same. His mother lay where he’d flung her, but instead of fear and defiance warring in her eyes, they stared up at him, open and lifeless. A trickle of blood from her nose dripped over her lips, staining them a garish, glistening red. Her fingernails were torn where they had grabbed at the carpet. But most importantly, Peter could no longer feel her mind fighting his. He and Nathan were the only minds still working in the house.

“Nathan,” said Peter. His voice sounded like it was coming from far away. This wasn’t right. He couldn’t be here. He wasn’t here, with his brother’s tears and his mother’s dead body.

And then he wasn’t anywhere. One terrifying moment of nothingness, that place where he stepped when he stepped between places, and he stepped out again onto a New York street, with cars zipping by on both sides. One clipped his shoulder, sending a shock of pain down his arm.

He let the next cab hit him. He wouldn’t die, and he deserved pain right now. Pain enough to forget.


	2. Chapter 2

**Interlude.**

Nathan stood, frozen, while Peter disappeared. Nathan sat down next to the body and held it gently. He didn’t feel anything. She had tried to kill him or at least let it happen. Same as Peter.

He closed her eyes with his palm, not as easy to do as it looked in the movies. She’d taken her secrets to the grave with her. She would rather this than Peter taking them from her. She’d kept her dignity, even in death.

“You win, Ma,” he said. Some burden lifted from his shoulders and his eyes filled with tears. It was his time now. No more string pulling, no more second guessing.

He waited. Until her head grew heavy on his lap, and her body cooled. Minutes slipped by. Outside the sky grew peach and then violet and then the sun set. Hours had passed since he arrived here. Peter wasn’t coming back to fix this.

Nathan lay her head back on the floor, stood up and called the police. They’d find an aneurism in her brain, call it natural causes, there would be a funeral, and life would go on. As long as Peter came back.

***

The funeral was that weekend. Family flew in from all over the world, surprised to see Nathan still alive. He wondered if Bob or Matt’s father would come. Now they were the only ones left alive from Adam’s picture, but if they were there, they didn’t show themselves to Nathan.

Neither did Peter. Nor did Nathan feel the brush of air, the feather-light touch on his mind to tell him Peter was there. The air was dead as their mother now, unrippled by Peter’s thoughts.

It drizzled during the funeral, leaving Nathan’s hair damp when he went back to the Westchester house with Heidi. The boys wore dark suits and were solemn at the funeral with no prompting.

“Where is Peter?” Heidi asked. She sat down on a sofa in the living room, and crossed her legs, wrapping her legs around one knee protectively. She left her coat on.

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you. I thought you were dead.”

“Are you disappointed that I’m not?”

“They showed it on TV, over and over. You and Peter and someone I didn’t recognize. You were going to tell the world something. What was it?”

Peter gone. Angela gone. Heidi and his children, gone even though they were here. His despair had a different flavor than before. Before he’d wanted Peter back with every fiber of his body, enough to throw everything away, Heidi, his family, his career. Now—now it might be better if Peter didn’t come back. They were poison together, and poison apart, but if Peter stayed gone at least he only had himself to worry about.

So he told her as much as he could. The flying, Peter’s blood, the explosion above New York. Heidi nodded along, looking as numb as Nathan felt.

She asked questions in a strange, flat voice, and Nathan answered them. Finally she asked, “What about Simon and Monty? Are they going to have . . . powers?”

“They might. Keep an eye out.” He stood, ending their conversation.

“I should be getting back to New Jersey,” she said, hesitation in her voice. _Aren’t you going to beg me to stay?_ she seemed to ask. He’d done that the last time they spoke. Then she’d said harsh words about Peter meaning more to him than his family, words he hadn’t been able to deny, and so he let her go.

“Go,” he said.

She looked at him with blue eyes wide, and he softened somewhat. He pulled her close and kissed her forehead. The rigidity of her body softened under his hands. “Go, Heidi. Someone is trying to kill me. I don’t want you and the kids around.”

***

And then he was alone again. It took some wrangling with lawyers to get the will straightened out. She’d entangled the process more by making every business decision that involved the Petrelli empire contingent on both his and Peter’s approval, a twist of the knife from beyond the grave.

That was when he set private detectives on Peter’s trail. True, Peter could disappear more completely than any detective could track, but he would slip eventually, and Nathan would have someone watching.

And no matter what, he had access to his mother’s papers. She’d gone to her death with memories that could never be replaced, but The Company still left a paper trail. Between that and his father’s dealings with Linderman, there was enough to arrest Bob, Mr. Parkman, and a host of other lower level employees.

***

He gave his speech again, this time from the Gramercy Park house, flanked by Dr. Suresh and Matt Parkman. The world convulsed. Laws were passed. Interest groups, focus groups, and polls, weighed opinion, as pundits formed it.

Nathan went on countless political shows, flew for thousands of cameras, and landed, a year after his speech, as the head of a lobbying firm on behalf of Supers’ Rights.

His firm won some fights, and lost others. Unscrupulous people still tried to take advantage of Supers, and half the country thought they were a menace who ought to be locked up.

It wasn’t until four years after their mother died that Peter reappeared again. He landed in Nathan’s office, wearing the same clothes he’d disappeared in, torn and tattered and blood-stained.

“Forgive me, Nathan,” he said, pressing his hand to Nathan’s chest, then slumped to the floor in a faint.

 **Part 2.**

Peter woke in an unfamiliar bed, but it smelled of Nathan, and that was close enough to home. He rolled over, opened his eyes, and saw Nathan partially silhouetted in the light from a cloud-white sky that shone in the window.

“Where are we?” Peter asked.

“My apartment.”

Peter sat up. The room had the spare understated elegance that Peter would have expected from Nathan, but it was still unfamiliar. “I’ve never been here.”

“No. You haven’t.”

“Nathan, what—?”

“What happened to you? Where have you been?”

“Nathan, come over here.” He patted the bed next to him. “Please. I didn’t mean to do it. I can fix it. You have to forgive me.” Nathan’s expression stayed the frustrated mask Peter had seen when he collapsed in Nathan’s office.

“What do you mean you can fix it?”

“I can go back to when—” Peter swallowed thickly “—it happened, and keep it from happening.”

“Fix . . . Ma, you mean?”

“Yes, of course. It was an accident.”

“Why now, Peter? It’s been four years.”

Peter scrambled back on the bed as if Nathan had lunged toward him to attack. “Four years? But—I just . . .”

“Tell me what happened, Peter.”

Nathan stepped forward so Peter could see him more clearly. He’d lost the rumpled gauntness he’d had when Peter saw him last. He slim and lithe now, animated by a similar restless energy as when he’d been campaigning, but now lines of kindness that hadn’t been there before creased the edges of his eyes. He looked happier. Peter reached up and touched the hand print of soot and dried blood that he’d left on Nathan’s pristine white shirt.

“I couldn’t stay there . . . and then I got hit by a cab. I woke up in a hospital, and thought of you. And then I was here.”

Now Nathan sat down next to him and said, gently. “It’s been four years, Peter. I buried Ma. I started a new life.”

“Did you ever get to—?”

“I told the world. And now I’m working for our rights. Dr. Suresh has government funding for his research.”

Peter moved his hand up to touch the side of Nathan’s neck to see if he could feel the weight of those years on Nathan, the changes they’d wrought in him. His pulse jumped under Peter’s fingers, and he turned his face away.

“I’m so sorry, Nathan. I didn’t know.” The words seemed empty. Four years. He couldn’t imagine. Four years might as well be a lifetime. “I can go back, and be there with you for all of it.”

Nathan turned his face back toward Peter. He took Peter’s hand from his cheek and kissed the palm, almost reverently, then placed it in Peter’s lap, as if returning a gift that was too much for him.

He reached out to touch Peter’s face, but pulled back before making contact. “Peter . . . I lived those years. I built things. Things I’m proud of. I made some peace with Heidi.” He fixed his eyes on Peter’s. “I don’t want you to change it.”

Peter scrambled out of bed, away from this nightmare Nathan, this Nathan who didn’t need him. He would have jumped further, in time and space, but Nathan had stripped his clothes while he was sleeping, and he was wearing only boxers and socks.

“We were going to save the world together,” he said accusingly. Nathan always went on without him, it never changed.

“You still can. There’s a lot to be done here and now.”

Peter went to the closet and pulled out some of Nathan’s clothes at random. “No. No. This future is wrong. I’m going to fix it.”

“Don’t, Peter.” Nathan’s voice lost all its kindness.

“You can’t stop me.”

Nathan took a step toward him, and Peter disappeared.

***

He only jumped out onto the street. Nathan’s apartment was on a quiet street in Georgetown. The outside of the brownstone was brick and traced with ivy, cozy and incongruous after seeing the spare furnishings inside.

He wasn’t ready to go back yet. That scene with Nathan and his mother felt like—was—only yesterday.

He’d healed before the ambulance even got him to the hospital, but with the blood on his clothes, they gave him an IV of morphine before the ambulance made it through New York traffic to St. Vincent’s. It gave everything a nice, rosy haze, and distanced him from the weight sitting on his chest of Mom-is-dead. The I-killed-her part he couldn’t bear to give words, even in his mind.

But he’d had to disappear again before they noticed he had no wounds, his broken limbs had straightened, the cut on his head closed up as if it had never been. And that’s when he thought of Nathan, and stood in front of him, all in one breath.

Too few breaths between that and this. Peter walked downhill until he was on the edge of the Potomac. Girls in clothes too skimpy for the weather jogged along; one almost ran him over when he stood too long near the edge. The water was shallow and murky. He wondered if he could drown, if it were even possible for him, or would his body reject the water, as it rejected other forms of death.

It wasn’t a serious thought, though. He continued walking as the sun rose in the sky and made him warm the black coat he’d borrowed from Nathan. He didn’t even know what time it was here, what season, spring or fall.

He had to go back. He didn’t belong here. Getting back should be as easy as falling down, as easy as letting go, and sliding back to the time where he belonged, but when he did, somehow the muscles didn’t work. The world stayed resolutely the same around him: the same light breeze, the same sound of oars dipping in the water as a single skull rode past.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried harder, but he knew nothing had changed without opening them. He felt a light touch on his arm, and opened his eyes to see a slight blonde woman looking concerned. “Are you okay, sir?”

Peter shook his head. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Okay,” she said uncertainly. “There’s a Barnes & Noble up the hill if you need a bathroom.”

“I’m fine,” Peter repeated. “Thanks for your concern.”

She let go and resumed her run back toward Georgetown, and Peter continued walking. He could see the Jefferson Memorial shining in the distance, weak sun on a gold dome. It seemed as good a goal as any.

Once he got there, he could see the spire of the Washington monument and thought he might as well go there next. The Mall looked just the same as the last time he’d been here on a school trip in high school. The exhibits at the museum had changed, different things were fenced off and under construction, but other than that, the wide green expanse looked no different.

Four years. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. How could he have simply jumped over and missed four years? Why couldn’t he go back? Shock, he must still be in shock. He was a traveler here, a tourist, not a permanent resident. He could go back and fix it, or he could go back and stay away from Nathan, let him have his four years to build his little project.

Four years without Nathan. He couldn’t imagine. What had Nathan thought when Peter disappeared, when he’d gone through the funeral, through a press conference—probably several press conferences—without Peter by his side to keep him safe?

He didn’t need Peter, never had. All the powers in the world, and Nathan was better off without him. Peter’s footsteps slowed as he walked along. He had nowhere to go. He let his shoulders slump forward.

Someone’s shoulder knocked into his. Peter turned to see a man’s blond head atop a sun-reddened neck. He continued walking, but something tugged him to look back again, something maddeningly familiar in the open swing of the man’s arms drew his attention back.

The man turned when Peter did, removing his sunglasses, squinting blue eyes against the sun. “Peter,” said Adam, looking completely unsurprised to see him. “I’d heard you’d come back.”

Peter flung him to the ground with a thought, startling the tourists and pigeons around him. “Who did you hear that from? Did Nathan tell you?”

Adam stood up and dusted himself off. “I’m fine,” he said, wiping a trickle of blood from his lip. “No, Nathan will have nothing to do with me, of course. But you will. Did you miss me?”

“No,” said Peter sullenly. Adam was the last person he wanted to see, looking as unchanged by the years as Peter. Not too long ago the blood on Adam’s lip would have been from Peter biting it. Peter didn’t want to remember that.

Adam put a careful hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Let’s go somewhere and talk, shall we?”

Adam took him to a cozy little restaurant in Dupont Circle. “You could fly us there,” he suggested, but Peter just glared at him, and so they walked.

“How did you find me?”

“You’re smarter than that, Peter. How do you think I found you?”

“You have someone in Nathan’s office.”

“See,” said Adam brightly, as if encouraging a reluctant student. “I knew you could do it.”

“How _is_ your brother?” Adam asked when they sat down at the bar. He ordered a glass of scotch for himself and a cosmopolitan, for Peter without asking him what he wanted.

“You’d know better than me,” Peter answered sullenly, affronted by the drink, although it was one he enjoyed.

“Would I? Interesting.”

“I thought Hiro took care of you.”

“He didn’t kill me, if that’s what you mean. Too kind, always his mistake.”

“I won’t make that mistake.”

“As a rejoinder, that lacked symmetry, and as a sentiment it’s not very believable. You need me, Peter.”

“I don’t.”

Adam gripped his leg under the table, fingers digging in painfully, and Peter got hard. “You do. I can do for you what he won’t.”

“What’s that?” Peter asked, breath growing short. He still hated Adam, still wanted to punch his face through a wall, but he wanted him for other things too. His mother’s death was still fresh in his mind, and here was Adam, ready to be everything Peter needed: culprit, accomplice, scapegoat. He’d be the agent of Peter’s punishment if Peter asked him to be.

“Give you direction.”

Peter opened his mouth to protest, _I have direction_ or _I can follow Nathan_ , but Nathan wouldn’t give this to him.

“You have vision, Peter, but you lack focus.”

“Your direction sucks.”

“Peter, Peter. The threat was the thing. I never planned to kill anyone.” Peter looked at him without moving a muscle until Adam shrugged. “I don’t owe you any explanation. You let Hiro bury me alive.”

“Sorry ‘bout that. I didn’t know.”

“And if you had?” Adam waved his hand dismissively. “Bygones.” He drained his glass. “You coming?” Adam tilted his head to one side, and Peter had a flash of his own naked back and Adam’s hands on it, gripping fingerprints into his flesh. Adam’s thought, memory, plan, or both. Peter flushed and shifted in his seat.

“Are you scared of me, Peter? You’re more powerful than I could ever dream of being.” No bitterness, just a fact. “Come with me.”

This time Peter did teleport them. The bar to Adam’s hotel, and fast, before Peter could change his mind. He wondered if he could leave Adam, in the blankness through which he traveled, outside time and space, but even as he formed the thought, they were there, and Adam’s lips were on his, bruising, biting, drawing blood that faded back as soon as Peter tasted it.

Peter shrugged off his clothes—Nathan’s clothes—and let Adam push him down on the bed. Adam rubbed two spit slicked fingers around his entrance for a few seconds until Peter whined and pushed back against him.

“Punish me,” said Peter. “Hurt me.”

“I can do that,” Adam answered, voice smooth and urbane as if they were still sitting at the bar. And he did, fingers and then cock up inside, hurt and pleasure mixed. Adam’s fingers were like iron on his hips as he worked himself in and drew in a sharp breath at Peter’s tightness.

“You’ve been a naughty boy, Peter,” said Adam, when he was pressed all the way in. His skin was cool against Peter’s back. _He’s not really alive._ The thought flashed unbidden through Peter’s mind. “You killed Angela.”

All pleasure fled. If he could have gathered his thoughts enough to teleport away from here, he would have, but his discipline over his powers had fled too. “I should thank you,” Adam continued. His fingers were oddly light on Peter’s shoulders, a caress that was more terrifying than his roughness could ever be. “I’d meant to get around to it, but you beat me to it.”

“Why?”

“She imprisoned me too, Peter. I loved her and she betrayed me.”

“You . . . loved her?”

“We all did,” said Adam. To Peter’s horror, Adam bent over him again, until his chest brushed Peter’s back. He wrapped his hand around Peter’s dick and stroked it until he was hard again. “You and me, Peter. You’re so much like she was, before the world soured her.”

“You’re . . . crazy,” said Peter. His body continued its journey toward orgasm, divorced from the revulsion in his mind.

“Quite possibly,” Adam agreed. “Oh Peter,” he said when he came, clasping Peter close and stroking him until Peter grudgingly came.

“Get off me.”

Adam complied, and Peter jumped back, off the bed. He wanted to disappear even more now than when he’d—his mother—when she . . .

Adam smiled coolly. “Well, it was worth a try.”

His mind was a perfect blank surface, like a gray sky, impenetrable. “What do you want, Adam?”

“You’ve changed, Peter. You’re not as easy to manipulate as you used to be.”

“Flattery,” Peter scoffed.

“Go back to Nathan.” Adam’s voice was soft, almost sad, but Peter didn’t believe that show of emotion. It was another one of Adam’s lies.

“What do you want?”

“Will you probe my mind, Peter?” Adam asked, speaking the words with distaste. “Angela died of an aneurysm, but I’ve seen that kind of injury before. You can’t imagine how many Maury killed before he got it right. He wanted to stop, but your mother knew how important a weapon mind-reading could be.”

“Stop it.”

“You’ll learn, Peter. Why not learn on me?” He walked toward Peter. “I can heal. I can take the pain.”

“Get away from me,” Peter yelled. He flung his power outward, throwing Adam up against the wall. He fell and landed with a heavy thud. His neck made a sickening crack as he straightened it.

“It’s my hotel room,” was all he said.

***

Peter teleported himself back to Nathan’s apartment and lay down on the couch to wait. This couch had come from the Westchester house. It was old and comfortable. Peter used to nap on it when he visited Nathan and his family for long weekends off from nursing school. He fell asleep on it now.

Peter dreamed. It didn’t have the preternatural clarity of his visions, the feeling of being somehow more awake than he was in real life, but it had a vividness that most of his dreams lacked. In it, Nathan gave a press conference, the same one he gave before.

 _This time he gets far enough to talk about genetic anomalies—gifts, he calls them. Peter holds a light bulb between two fingertips, and makes it shine._

 _Nathan turns and smiles at him, a smile of pure love, as warm and bright as the light in Peter’s hands. And then a bullet strikes him in temple, and his head snaps back. More bullets pierce his chest. He falls in slow motion, arms flying forward as his body fell back. Peter falls to his knees to be by Nathan’s side._

 _“Move aside, Peter,” says his mother, and in the logic of dreams, Peter knows that she was the shooter. He isn’t surprised when he sees a gun in her black gloved hand._

 _“No,” Peter protests, but the words won’t come out. She reaches down to cup his cheek in her hand, the one that isn’t holding the gun._

 _“You can die too, Peter,” she says. “Adam showed me where. He showed me how.” Her voice is a caress. Peter finds himself bending over, so she can put the bullet where it needs to go._

 _“Peter,” says Nathan. But Nathan shouldn’t speak, he’s dead now._

“Peter,” said Nathan, more harshly. He gripped Peter’s shoulder. Peter squinted at the light coming in the window, silhouetting Nathan’s slim form.

“Nathan . . . I . . .” Peter melted under Nathan’s hand, pressing his shoulder into Nathan’s grip.

But Nathan let go and sat down in a chair opposite and rubbed his forehead. “Did you go back?” he asked. _Peter, always trouble, easier when he wasn’t around._

“I couldn’t.”

“Thanks, Pete. This power of yours—”

“I mean I tried and I _couldn’t_. I couldn’t go back there. I still would if I could.”

“Isn’t this what you always wanted? The world knows. Supers are using their powers for good, and those who aren’t are rehabilitated. We have programs to help people develop their powers, and blockers for those who don’t want them.”

“It’s built on lies.” Peter turned over and faced the couch cushions.

“That’s a little melodramatic, even for you, Pete.”

“I killed Mom, Nathan. And you want me to have to live with that. I can _fix_ it.”

“You’ll fix it,” Nathan echoed. “Where does it stop? Do you go back and stop yourself from talking to Adam, stop yourself from leaving Caitlin in the future, stop yourself from exploding. All those things had to happen.”

“You’re glad she’s dead.”

“I’ve mourned and moved on. And so should you.”

Peter sat up, and reached out to put his hand on Nathan’s arm. He looked into Nathan’s eyes, and tried to put all the pain and guilt he felt into them. “How do you move on from something like this?”

Nathan kissed his forehead. “You forgive yourself. And stick around long enough to give me a chance to forgive you. I’ll always forgive you.”

***

Peter spent the next few days hanging out in Nathan’s apartment. He watched TV and caught up with recent events. The TV shows were new, all the music was new, but the news sounded the same, except the occasional mentions of Supers.

It was all fairly surreal. Nathan had changed the world irrevocably—as long as Peter didn’t go back—and yet it went on almost the same as before. Peter wasn’t sure what he had imagined, not capes and secret identities, of course, but something, something different, something bigger. This was the same day-to-day struggle as it had always been. Life went on.

Life went on, as normal as Peter could expect in a strange city, with four missing years. Except he started seeing strange things outside Nathan’s apartment. A figure who lingered too long in front of the building, but walked casually on when Peter glared at him out the window. Nathan reported a break-in at his office. Nothing was missing, but they changed all the computer’s passwords.

Peter told Nathan about Adam, leaving out the sex, but mentioning he had resurfaced. His plans couldn’t be benign.

“I’ll increase security,” Nathan promised.

“Is that enough?”

“All he can do is not die, right? The virus was destroyed.” Nathan seemed unconcerned.

“There are other viruses. I’m going to find out what he wants.”

That made Nathan glance up from his papers and look intently at Peter. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“I’ve already seen him once. I’ll be okay.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“No, I have to do this alone.”

Peter went to find Adam at his hotel, to see if he had anything to do with this, but the hotel reported no Adam Monroe or any of Adam’s aliases staying there.

Peter had lost his chance. Adam could be gone for days or centuries, and Peter wouldn’t know it, couldn’t find him. Where _was_ he?

A vision flashed into Peter’s mind. An impression of bright grass, crowds of people. The Mall. If Peter wanted to teleport to Adam, he could. Maybe this feeling, this _knowing_ where Adam was came from his telepathy, but whatever it was, it meant Peter could confront him.

Adam didn’t look surprised to see Peter. He was sitting on the grass with his back against a tree and a computer open on his lap. “Peter,” he said. “I thought you’d come looking for me. Reconsidered my offer?”

“What offer is that? Be your lackey? Do your dirty work?”

“Something like that. I would have thought you’d enjoy that sort of thing.” He smiled quick and insincere.

“Why did you break into Nathan’s office?”

“If you’re not going to help me, I see no reason I should tell you that.”

“I can make you tell me.”

“Try, Peter. I don’t crack as easily as some.”

“I can kill you with my mind,” said Peter.

Adam looked unfazed. “Do it,” he said. “You know it’s the only way to stop me.”

Peter focused his will on Adam’s mind, carving out secrets, first the simplest brushes of sensation, the grass wetting Adam’s knees, the breeze lifting the hairs on the back of his neck, and then more, his desire for Peter’s power under his control, his certainty that the world belonged under his command. He pictured the safe again, cracking under the strain of his telekinesis, and felt Adam’s mind begin to buckle.

He wasn’t as far gone, though, as when he’d confronted his mother. A sudden stillness filled the air; Adam’s mind stopped giving him any feedback, either fighting him or allowing him entrance. At first Peter thought Adam had a new defense, until—“Peter.”

Peter opened his eyes, and saw himself, gaunt and tired, gray peppering his unshaven chin. His twin lifted a hand in greeting, and Peter found himself echoing the movement. “Don’t do this.”

“He’s the last one,” Peter said. “When he’s dead, it’s all over.”

“That’s what he wants you to think. Why did he confront you out here? Why did he tell you his plan? Why did he invite you to kill him?”

“He—”

“It’s what he wants. You have an audience now, and they are watching you kill him. They will lock you up, and sedate you so you can’t use your powers. Nathan will fight and fight to have you freed, but he will not be successful. The tide will turn against the Supers, more and more of them will be locked up and killed.”

“Why would Adam want that?”

“Without you or Nathan to fight him, he has all the power he needs. He becomes the voice of reason. He gives speeches about containment and control. He _wins_.”

“What about Mom? Why didn’t you go back and stop me then?”

“This is when it went wrong, not then.”

“Are you saying I should have . . .?”

“That’s not my decision to make.”

His twin walked toward him. Peter had an irresistible urge to touch him, measure the thinness of his future’s wrists with his fingers, and a revulsion when he did, a wrench of familiar and alien when their hands met. “Whose is it then?”

“Yours. As long as you don’t turn into me.” He backed away from Peter and held his hand up to the light. The gray sky shone through it, so Peter could see clouds passing behind it and the shadow of leaves through the flesh. His twin smiled thinly. “You’re changing your mind.”

“What happens to you?”

“I cease to exist.”

“You want to die?”

“It’s not dying,” he said, voice becoming indistinct. Peter spotted some movement out of the corner of his eyes. The sphere in which time stopped was contracting around them. “It’s becoming you again, with choices still ahead.”

Movement resumed, but Peter no longer beat his mind against Adam’s. _Do it,_ Adam thought at him. _Finish it._

Peter bent over and helped Adam to his feet. “No,” he said. “I’m taking you to Hiro. He can decide what to do with you.”

Peter focused on Hiro, and then he was there, in a tall Tokyo skyscraper, in a larger corner office. Hiro looked more tired than when Peter had seen him last.

“I found something of yours,” he said. Adam looked around wildly, saw Hiro, and snarled something in Japanese. Peter closed his mind so he wouldn’t understand the words. This wasn’t between him and Adam anymore, if it ever had been. “Take better care of him this time,” said Peter. “I don’t want to see him again.”

“I’m sorry, Peter. I will,” Hiro promised.

Peter didn’t stay to see the rest.

He found Nathan alone in his office. The window was open, and one of Washington’s zephyr breezes blew in the window. The air smelled of magnolias.

Nathan stood up when Peter appeared, rushed to him and embraced him.

“I’m okay, Nathan, I’m okay,” said Peter, surprised at Nathan’s rush of emotions, but maybe this life had let Nathan stay softer.

“You took care of it?” Nathan asked.

“He wanted me to kill him in public, to undo everything you’d tried to do. And I almost did it.”

“But you didn’t,” said Nathan, with perfect certainty. He still held Peter, not quite a hug, but close enough that no one could stand between them.

“I brought him back to Hiro.” At Nathan’s look, Peter added, “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“What are you going to do now?” Nathan licked his lips, and glanced up at Peter. Peter heard _don’t save her, let me keep this_ , and didn’t know if it was his thought or Nathan’s.

“I don’t know. This isn’t what I expected. I wanted to be a hero, but I never am.”

“Heroism isn’t big gestures, Pete. It’s doing the right thing when you can, and living with it when you can’t. It’s trying to save people instead of hurting them. If lots of people have to die for your vision . . .” Nathan’s eyes grew far away, and Peter knew he was thinking about the explosion over New York, and their mother’s dreams of a perfect world rising from those ashes. Peter turned Nathan’s face back toward him, with fingers and then a kiss.

 _First time in Nathan’s new apartment . . . for him it’s been four years_. Peter smiled against Nathan’s lips thinking it.

“Then it’s not the right vision,” Peter finished. “I want to stay here and help you, Nathan. Tell me there’s something I can do here.”

Nathan smiled, and shoved a dossier across the desk. His eyes were dark with promise, but for now his voice was all business. “There’s this kid in Arkansas with some kind of psychometric powers. I think he could be helpful for sorting through some of Linderman’s artifacts.”

“You want me to grab him?”

“I want you to recruit him. There’s an offer letter in the folder. We’ll pay.”

Peter stood up. He looked at the picture and knew where to find this kid. He looked to be seventeen or eighteen, poor and under educated. He’d take the money and the better future.

“This is how the hero business works?”

“This is how it works.” Nathan stood up too. “You can wear a cape and tights if you like, but you might get some weird looks in the Ozarks.” He tried to hide a grin and failed. “Welcome home, Peter.”

 **The End.**


End file.
